Our workplaces are becoming more and more saturated with things to steal our attention. It can be a sobering experience to look back on our day and see how little time we actually spent working on things that mattered. When we’re working to our full potential, we can sometimes achieve a state of “flow,” or a mental state when we’re so focused in our work that everything else fades away. (You might call it the “The Zone” or a “groove.”) Unfortunately, it’s becoming harder to get into these mental states when we’re constantly bombarded by distractions.

Here are some of the best ways to firewall our attention and ensure that we don’t finish the day completing a fraction of what we set out to do.

1. Figure out where your time is being spent
2. Keep email closed
3. Make heavy use of email filters
4. Define your “Big Rocks”
5. Don’t check email in the morning
6. “Do Not Disturb” time

There are dozens of sites and services set-up to help you promote events such as webinars, seminar, workshops, grand openings and product launches. While these tools are indeed online you can get benefit employing them for local offline events as well.

Use MeetUp and create a group surrounding your event – this might turn into something very valuable to do on an ongoing basis and create a nice way for you to build a local community.

Publish your event to some of the bigger online events calendars such as Yahoo’s Upcoming or Eventful. These sites have geography built in and help promote events that are near users.

Create multiple Facebook pages or twitter accounts just for the event and post relevant information by building local followings through twitter search and Facebook Groups.

Do a series of interviews with participants in the event or to tease out bits of content that will be presented. Record these interviews as postcasts and post them on your event pages, submit to iTunes and offer them to others to run on their sites. Just make sure it’s great content.

Upload transcripts from the interviews or slides you intend to present to sites such as DocStoc, Scribd, and Slideshare.

Include quick videos and photos of before, during and after the event and host on YouTube and Flickr for added exposure.

Submit press releases before, during and after the event to sites such as PR Web and PitchEngine.

Cross post as much information from all of this activity to all of your social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and twitter as all allow links to videos, audios and photos.

The short-term impact of working a system like this to promote an event or launch is greater exposure and hopefully greater participation, but the long term impact for future events may be the real payoff. As you get better at this kind of social media routine, you’ll find momentum building through search engine traffic too.

We think that there is little point in entering a new market unless it provides the opportunity to really shake up an industry. Almost all our new ventures come about from our thinking up a product or service that we believe people really want. Then, if our entry has the potential to make waves, we’re going to look at it very closely.

You’ll notice that making a profit hasn’t entered the picture yet. It’s rare for me or the team to consider only the money that can be made. I feel it’s pointless to approach investing with the question, “How can I make lots of money? We must bring in the numbers guys and work out some business plans.” No one will ever agree on exactly how to make money. The consultants will say your idea will work, while the accountants will prove that it cannot.

When it’s time to decide whether or not to go ahead, the decision must come from your heart…pursue your passions, your ideas will be more likely to succeed.

I learned to follow my passions at the beginning of my career, when some friends and I created Student magazine to give a voice to young people who were campaigning to stop the Vietnam War. As for the actual business aspects, such as paying the bills… well, we had to sort that out later. We just hoped that we would sell enough copies to stay afloat and learn the business side as we went along.

What was the first business idea you came up with?
I set up this magazine called Student when I was 16, and I didn’t do it to make money – I did it because I wanted to edit a magazine. There wasn’t a national magazine run by students, for students. I didn’t like the way I was being taught at school. I didn’t like what was going on in the world, and I wanted to put it right.

Of course, a lot of businesses want to reach students, so I funded the magazine by selling advertising. I sold something like $8,000 worth of advertising for the first edition, and that was in 1966. I printed up 50,000 copies, and I didn’t even have to charge for them on the newsstand because my costs were already covered.

So I became a publisher by mistake – well, not quite by mistake, because I wanted to be an editor but I had to make sure the magazine would survive. The point is this: Most businesses fail, so if you’re going to succeed, it has to be about more than making money.

Are you saying entrepreneurs should go into business without the bottom line in mind?
Ideally, since 80 percent of your life is spent working, you should start your business around something that is a passion of yours. If you’re into kite-surfing and you want to become an entrepreneur, do it with kite-surfing.

Look, if you can indulge in your passion, life will be far more interesting than if you’re just working. You’ll work harder at it, and you’ll know more about it. But first you must go out and educate yourself on whatever it is that you’ve decided to do – know more about kite-surfing than anyone else. That’s where the work comes in. But if you’re doing things you’re passionate about, that will come naturally.

Seth Godin says: “If someone’s gonna watch a video, they’re not gonna watch it because they care about YOU. They’re gonna watch it because they care about ME. They’re not gonna read an e-mail from you; they’re gonna read ME-mail, ‘cuz that’s who they care about.”

Create a strong email signature that includes pertinent contact information and philosophy/quote.

3 Sentence Bio

Have this bio available for periodical submission. This bio should be written in third person and identify who you are and what you can provide your client.

NOTES ON ENTREPRENEUR VERSUS EXPERT BIOS

Entrepreneur

Lands customers/clients because they value the brands or institutions you have been affiliated with.

Expert

Gets you hired to share your expertise. This articulate the things that no one else can say (ie founder of Brand, CEO of Brand).

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Research firm Nielsenreports that social media & blogs are now the top online activities:

Americans spend nearly a quarter of their time online on social networking sites and blogs, up from 15.8 percent just a year ago (43 percent increase) according to new research released today from The Nielsen Company.

The research revealed that Americans spend a third their online time (36 percent) communicating and networking across social networks, blogs, personal email and instant messaging.

Here’s how how people’s time online now breaks down:

Based on the Nielsen report, it looks like mainstream Internet users have joined the first adopters, making new media and social media a key part of what they do online.